Zayed National Museum, Abu Dhabi

Client: Event Communications

Architect: Foster + Partners

Designed by Pritzker prize winning architect Lord Norman Foster the Zayed National Museum’s distinctive towers are reminiscent of the wing tips of the falcon.

The National Museum of the UAE, will tell the story of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, his unification of the United Arab Emirates, the history of the region and its cultural connections across the world.

Celebrating Sheikh Zayed’s legacy and love of nature, the museum is set within a landscaped garden, based on a timeline of this life.

Balancing the external lightweight steel structures internally pod-shaped galleries are suspended over a dramatic top-lit central lobby, which is dug into the earth to exploit its thermal properties and brings together shops, cafes and informal venues for performances of poetry and dance.

RMP were commissioned to provide the acoustic design of the exhibition spaces. Achieving a museum ambience that gave visitors the grand sense of scale whilst still maintaining speech intelligibility and a sense of intimacy was a challenge that required RMP’s years of experience in design of cultural projects. RMP constructed detailed 3D acoustic models of the complex spaces to assist the specification of surface finishes.

Construction on the museum began in 2016 and is due for completion early next decade.